In many places we work we have to manage a client’s servers and remembering IP’s and names can be tiresome or very confusing.

SSH has a wonderful ability to allow configuring “shortcuts” that you can configure to associate names to servers and even define the login you want to use for each one, the problem becomes that you need to manage the file and add those entry manually (or even remember to do that).

A simple bash function can help make life easier :

mkshtc () {
_user=$(echo $1 | awk ‘{split($1,a,”@”); print a[1]}’ )
_host=$(echo $1 | awk ‘{split($1,a,”@”); print a[2]}’ )
printf “Host $2\\n\\tHostname $_host\\n\\tUser $_user\\n” >> ~/.ssh/config
}

using this in your .bashrc file you can add the new servers to the config file in a 1-liner

mkshtc admin@192.168.0.11 glare_node_1


and the entry is added to your .ssh/config file

# cat ~/.ssh/config
Host glare_node_1
Hostname 192.168.0.11
User admin

Easy, simple and now you can use names for your ssh connections (think of it as a DNS for your logins), the function can easily be expanded to include other attributes for the host like port and identity File:

mkshtc () {
_user=$(echo $1 | awk '{split($1,a,"@"); print a[1]}' )
_host=$(echo $1 | awk '{split($1,a,"@"); print a[2]}' )
_file=$(echo $1 | awk '{print $2}' )
printf "Host $2\\n\\tHostname $_host\\n\\tUser $_user\\n\\tIdentityFile ~/.ssh/$_file\\n" >> ~/.ssh/config
}

Just make sure it is the right one for your needs.